The Kilchoman 3rd Edition 100% Islay 2009-2013

50ml church handbell mini

Tasting notes:
Oh, this is peaty.  So freshly peaty.  Like peat cut to prosciutto-thinness by an antique woodworking plane, then stuffed into a down pillowcase.  Light and delicate, like a prodigy of peat fairies dancing on the vernal equinox [John: Editor, this should be written as “faeries.”] [Editor: Typesetter, ignore this request.]  Under the peat it’s like walking into a women’s locker room.  Whispers of menthol rubefacients and BENGAY® in the air along with more pronounced notes of flowery shampoo-conditioners and the satisfaction of a workout completed.  Some younger whiskies have the smell of the lamp, so to speak, traces of the hard, imperfect work of distillation not yet smoothed out by the aging process.  This doesn’t.  Other young whiskies smell white dogish.  Not this one.  No, it’s more like black and white border collie ridden by Whiplash the Rodeo Monkey.

     On the mouth we’re getting greenness: Green peppers, greenbacks, and tulip stems used as a last-minute replacement for leeks.  I’m green with envy.  Sonoma Valley wine chilled in a vintage aluminum Hamm’s beer cooler.  This is refreshing!  Pepper on the mouth, like the black pepper ground on your Caesar salad in a fancy restaurant where you didn’t know to tell the pepper guy to stop grinding until it looked like a bag of Oreos exploded onto your salad plate.  Pizzazz and panache with an “act like you been there” confidence. 
     The finish is not complicated.  But neither is it raw.  It’s like Annie Savoy’s amorous preferences in Bull Durham which she defends by saying, “Young men are uncomplicated.”  Some corn creeps in from the corner of the finish, but it is bathed by a brine basting brush and turns wonderfully manky on the open.  A perfect fuel for model aircrafts, or so thought the curious younger brother before the plane was thrown into a bonfire by a decidedly incurious older brother.

  
  

Rating:

–On the scale of unanticipated intersections between literary criticism and baseball–
The Kilchoman 3rd edition 100% Islay is Crash Davis’ claim that “the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap.”–This Kilchoman has the same surprise as the fact that this opinion comes from a minor league catcher, and since Crash also says he believes in “good Scotch,” I think he’d take nips of this on the bus ride between Durham and Richmond.  So would I. 

     
     
  

  

                                                                      –John
    
    
   
   
–Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!

1 Comment on The Kilchoman 3rd Edition 100% Islay 2009-2013

  1. I love it. My favorite distillery and my favorite baseball movie intersect in one glorious moment.

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